The next few weeks could pose a crucial challenge to the international human rights movement. The international criminal court (ICC) is shortly expected to issue indictments over crimes committed in Darfur, while peace talks in Uganda could lead to a suspension of the indictments issued there. The issues involved are complicated and a reasoned and well-thought out response will be vital.

The ICC was created at a conference in Rome in 1998, which agreed its statute. It initially struggled against huge hostility from the United States. The Bush administration bullied over 100 countries into signing bilateral agreements pledging immunity from prosecution to American citizens accused of committing atrocities on their soil. Congress even passed a bill - the Hague invasion clause - authorising the president to attack Holland if any US citizen was ever brought before its court.

But the ICC now has the support of over 100 states and its influence is growing. The US is learning to live with the court and its hostility seems to be softening, as the influence of the neocons continues to decline.

Restrictions on US economic and military aid to countries refusing to do immunity deals have recently been dropped. More significantly, the US has given vocal backing to the work of the ICC in Uganda and Darfur. The investigation into crimes committed in northern Uganda was opened at the request of the Ugandan government, but the Darfur investigation was instigated by the UN security council with US support.

Supporters of the ICC have long argued that international criminal justice must be separated from politics. The point of establishing an international tribunal was precisely to hold the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity to account by a credible and impartial process. It was intended to be a mechanism of last resort which would only mount prosecutions when the national authorities in the countries concerned proved "unable or unwilling" to do so themselves.

Most of the US criticism of the ICC was down to simple paranoia as its firm rejection of complaints made about the behaviour of US forces in Iraq clearly demonstrates. The ICC itself has adopted a cautious strategy, concentrating its work in a small part of Africa of limited strategic significance to the major world powers. Its first trial is likely to be of a warlord from the Democratic Republic of Congo and, along with Uganda and Sudan, the fourth country that it is investigating is believed to be the Central African Republic.

A quick glance at a map shows that these four countries are linked geographically and the conflicts in each of them have often had spill-over effects. This means that the progress of the ICC's investigations in each country has been watched closely by its neighbours.

In its first investigation, in Uganda, the ICC clearly made mistakes, which antagonised many local human rights activists and led to charges that the court was acting solely at the behest of the Ugandan government. This government has also now dropped some very heavy hints that the ICC's indictments, issued against five leaders of the Lords Resistance Army, might be up for negotiation if they bring their followers in from the bush. While the ICC prosecutor cannot drop his own case, the court's statute does allow the UN security council to suspend the indictments for a renewable 12 month period.

Most Ugandan civil society activists would welcome such a move. If the peace talks currently taking place in southern Sudan do resolve the other outstanding issues it will be very difficult to argue that a temporary suspension is an unacceptable price to pay to bring an end to sub-Saharan Africa's longest-running civil war. Up to 1,000 people a week are currently dying in northern Uganda's displacement camps and there is an absolute moral imperative on the international community to do what it can to create the conditions that will allow them to go home.

But the Sudanese authorities, some of whom are also likely to face indictments, are bound to argue that they deserve similar treatment. Since all informed opinion agrees that peace talks are the only realistic way of bringing an end to the suffering of Darfur's people, this could also be a difficult argument to resist.

The difficulties are not, however, insurmountable. West Africa's brutal wars were eventually ended by a combination of peace talks and the deployment of international peacekeepers. Charles Taylor was offered an amnesty to persuade him to relinquish Liberia's presidency, yet he was eventually handed over to the international court for Sierra Leone. There are a number of other examples from around the world which show that justice delayed need not be justice denied.

The principle the ICC has helped to establish is for an end to impunity and that warlords, generals, public officials, and even heads of state can be held to account for the crimes they have committed. It does not mean that all of them will be, but it should keep a few of them looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.